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Tuesday, November 17, 2015

11

It captured Blog of the Year in the news and politics category at this year's NEPA BlogCon, and today is its 11th birthday.

As is tradition, it's time for the annual telling of how the blog came to be.

Dennis Fisher was WNEP's news director at the time. He was looking for ways to get fresh and original content on to WNEP.com. I suggested I write a column. He asked for a sample.

Before I could provide one, our then webmaster, Mark Sowers, noticed the blog thing catching on. He offered me the chance. I took it, and the rest is history.

We changed platforms a couple of times over the years, so I don't have an accurate count of blog entries. I estimate it's not far from 4,000. As I've said before, that's a lot of bad photography and banality.

It was fun when it started. It's still fun. It's a chance to show and tell what I can't do on TV, and what I don't have time for on TV. I don't look at hit numbers a lot, but I have noticed the "inside TV" stories generate the most views. I'm proud to say that in those 11 years, WNEP management has never ordered an entry pulled or changed.

WNEP.com has grown over the years. We are doing so much more with our web site, and I know the blog can be difficult for some to find. I've started providing links to Twitter and LinkedIn.